She died by suicide after being fired. Her family is suing UW, saying superiors ignored her cries for help

Editor’s note: This article discusses suicide. If you are in crisis, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

T

he last messages 29-year-old Victoria Price sent to friends showed signs she was in trouble.

“Goodbye. I can’t do this anymore,” Price wrote to a friend on Aug. 2, 2021.

“I’ve thought about this for a while,” she wrote to another friend.

Alarmed, her friends called Seattle Police, who sent officers for two wellness visits to Price’s Capitol Hill apartment that day, police records show. The third wellness check the next day would result in officers finding Price dead in her one-bedroom apartment.

Price’s mother, Jeanne Price, now says the suicide was preventable, according to a lawsuit filed against the University of Washington Department of Laboratory Medicine, her daughter’s employer at the time.

Jeanne Price said leadership knew Victoria Price was struggling with her mental health — and that human resources acted quickly to fire her before her daughter could file for disability leave. She said that her daughter, who performed dissections for scientific research, was distraught after seeing a deceased friend at the morgue.

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Jeanne Price said her daughter, who was a new employee, made attempts in July to secure time off, but either didn’t qualify or was told she’d have to wait. Two business days after she notified her supervisors that she planned to apply for disability leave, they fired her.

Hours later, Victoria Price died by suicide.

Jeanne Price said that her daughter was provided an outdated list of therapists two weeks before she was fired, and campus resources a week before she was fired.

In the Price family’s lawsuit, Jeanne Price alleged that the UW violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination by terminating her daughter after it failed to provide her with a reasonable accommodation, after it was requested.

“It took me a long time to wrap my brain around what seemed unfathomable to me, that they would have been so callous,” Jeanne Price said.

The University of Washington declined to comment for this story, citing ongoing litigation.

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“The University cares deeply for its employees and takes significant steps to support their physical wellbeing and mental health, including through voluntarily offering numerous supports, resources, and programs,” the Summit Law Group, which is representing the University of Washington, wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“The University is deeply saddened by Ms. Price’s tragic death and sympathizes tremendously with her family.”

“As a matter of well-established Washington law, however, employers like the University do not owe a duty of care to avoid causing termination-induced distress and cannot be liable for the same.”

The Price family had also sued the city of Seattle because police failed to enter Victoria Price’s apartment before the third wellness check. The lawsuit argued that officers should have known she was at heightened risk of self-harm. Callers told police Victoria Price had a history of suicidal ideation and a past suicide attempt.

“Seattle police officers must always weigh the circumstances of whether or not to enter someone’s private residence while respecting their Constitutional rights and adhering to [department] guidelines,” wrote Seattle Police spokesperson Eric Muñoz by email.

Based on officers’ notes at the time, which stated that the apartment lights were turned off and there were no signs of injury or distress, Muñoz said it was “reasonable to believe that Victoria may have not been home.”

The judge dismissed the city from the lawsuit in November.

Victoria Price had worked at the UW’s BRaIN Lab since April 2021, which required that she make frequent visits to the morgue, and use scalpels and bone saws to carefully remove brains from bodies for later research.

During one visit in May 2021, Victoria Price recognized a face in the morgue — her next door neighbor Joshah Mitchell. The pair had bonded over their shared experience in the service industry, and acted as a support system for one another during the dark days of the pandemic. Neither had family in Seattle.

But she dismissed her fears, as she knew Mitchell was on a trip out of town.

Only later did she learn — when she spotted people cleaning out his apartment — that Mitchell had died of an accidental overdose and the body she came across in the morgue was indeed her friend.

For weeks Victoria Price, a woman her mother described as fiercely independent and resilient, crumbled under the weight of grief, according to a tort claim filed against the University of Washington, and obtained by KUOW.

“She communicated to a number of friends and to her dad that it really accelerated her level of grief,” Jeanne Price said. “She was balancing her own needs of self care and she was trying to find a path through all of that so that she could keep the job, because she loved that job.”

Her co-workers noticed.

“I do feel strongly that she is struggling mentally,” wrote one supervisor to colleagues in management on July 24, 2021. “I just don’t know what to do, which is why I reached out.”

In other emails, that same supervisor wrote that although Victoria Price did not threaten to hurt herself, she had described her struggle to find help. The supervisor wrote that Victoria “made references that no one cares about her.”

The supervisor noted that Victoria Price had been making mistakes. “Maybe the quality control issues we’ve been having is all because she is not thinking clearly.”

Victoria Price had asked for bereavement leave after she learned her neighbor died, but didn’t qualify, as that policy pertains to deceased relatives. She asked for unpaid time off on July 19. She was told it could not impact lab scheduling, which was difficult to do during the first post-pandemic vacation season. She would have to wait five weeks until Aug. 23 for leave.

“The biggest thing she was asking for was a little time out of the vicinity of dead bodies,” Jeanne Price said.

She said her daughter “just tried to suck it up and keep going.”

Behind the scenes, management planned to fire Victoria Price, records show.

In one email exchange a department human resources manager alerts concerned co-workers that he had met with Victoria, notified her of campus resources for those in crisis, and provided her with disability resources and paperwork.

“If Victoria is expressing suicidal ideations, she needs to call 911,” he wrote.

The next day, the same human resources manager was helping leadership prepare to fire Victoria Price.

“In preparation for the *possibility* of termination, I would encourage leadership … disseminate the following narrative to Victoria via email.”

Emails show the human resources manager also worried that Victoria Price would file for disability before her dismissal, and reached out to campus human resources about it.

“The problem is that if the UW has prior notification (in any form) of an accommodation request and terminated the employee without addressing the request -- it would be very risky for the UW,” campus HR wrote back.

Jeanne Price was appalled at what she read in the records she received.

“You can't give someone a three-year-old list of mental health service providers, and then, eight days later say, ‘Well, that didn't improve anything,’ because it would take more than eight days to get your foot in the door with anybody who was taking new patients,” she said.

The morning of her death, Victoria Price went to work. Later that morning, she was fired.

At 12 p.m., after Victoria Price texted her friends goodbye, police showed up outside apartment 303 and knocked on her door, leaving after no one responded. Seattle Police policy states that police could enter without a warrant under circumstances, such as “preserving life.”

An autopsy would later put her time of death at about 12 p.m. But, records also show that she had been sending text messages as late as 11:45 a.m.

Photos from the scene show a small air conditioner propped in an open window and surrounded by cardboard. On the window there was a red sticker to notify emergency responders that she had pets — a cat named FlipFlop, and a three-legged dog named Elvin — in case of a fire.

At 5:43 p.m., another welfare check was requested by friends. Police came, and again, after no response, left.

The next day, at 1:07 p.m., her friends again called police and asked for a third welfare check. This time, the officer was able to reach the apartment manager through a neighbor, who gave the officer a key.

That’s when they found Victoria Price.

“I don't want to ever think I could have stopped this from happening to someone else, and not done it, " Jeanne Price said. “Even though (the lawsuit) is gut wrenching every day and it is emotionally a massive drain on me personally, I don't want anyone else to have to go through this.”